SMQ -- The Other Season
by Furinkazan
Summary: When some kid from Canada goes to Japan, gets possessed, then starts seeing visions and future selves, all hell breaks loose.


Imagine a vast nothingness. Imagine a place where matter itself is so widely dispersed, you could move through the whole thing in a straight line and never hit anything.

Now imagine that the universe is like that. It is already, but just imagine it.

And, finally, imagine you _are_ traveling through it, not necessarily in a straight line, but without direction. Searching, searching endlessly for... something.

This was, in fact, happening at the moment. Not that this kind of moment is an actual unit of time, but that doesn't matter. Point being, there was something wandering around in the universe. It wasn't sure what it was looking for, but it knew that eventually it would find it.

It could see, but in ways we couldn't comprehend. And when it saw a huge octagonal prism of blue, green and white loom up befront it (what did I tell you?), it knew that it had discovered its destination.

Not to mention that it discovered the pain of burning up in an atmosphere.

OH, BUGGER.

*****  
Sailor Moon Q  
Sailor Moon Quasi-Self Insertion Alternate Reality  
(Did you get all that?)  
Episode 1: Strange Happenings  
Written by/Directed by/Starring: Mishra, Neo-Kirby  
Copyright Archon Entertainment, 2001, except:  
All original Bishojo Senshi Sailormoon material  
Copyright Naoko Takeuchi  
etc, etc...  
*****

A/N: This takes place right before the Amazon Quartet shows up in Super S, which in fact they will not for this whole fic series. Let's just say that they gave up trying to find Pegasus, and then everyone forgot. Ok. I assume everyone has powered up again by now by now (if not, well excuse the heck outta me). Enjoy! Or, hey, at least try to...

*****

A 747 glided over the placid waves of the Pacific ocean. It was flying south-west, from Vancouver, Canada towards Tokyo, Japan. Most of its passengers were asleep, it being somewhere around midnight. Well, most of them were, anyway.

One young man of seventeen, however, was wide awake and typing away happily on something that resembled a cross between a graphing calculator and a laptop.

He was Mike Kostecki, and used to live in Toronto, Ontario, but his father had been offered a job advancement in the company's branch in Tokyo; and since his mother was basically his father's personal secretary, they'd decided the best thing to do was to bring Mike with them. Mind you, it wasn't his decision, but as long as he had a computer, he'd be fine. And for once, his parents agreed.

He had short brown hair which looked blow-dried the way it stuck out everywhere, and thick side-burns followed his jaw-line, ending just before his chin. He had grayish-blue eyes that never really seemed to focus on anything. But when they focused on you, you got the feeling he was looking inside your head. He wore a light blue shirt and some heavy khakis, pockets bulging.

Mike stopped typing and looked at the monitor thoughtfully. Then he took a pair of headphones from one of his pockets and plugged it into his computer. He opened up a little program that randomly played mp3s and pressed play: Break Stuff, by Limp Bizkit, started up, followed by Killing in the Name of from Rage Against the Machine, and Smack My Bitch Up by Prodigy, and Mike nodded his head to the beat(s). He was a fan of any and all rock music, with a little rap and techno/electronica thrown in. And the occasional slower song didn't hurt. Oh hell, as long as they played their own instruments and it wasn't Country, he'd listen to it.

After a while, he shut off his computer, put away his headphones and lay his head back. He turned and looked out the window, at the velvety blackness of the night. He really didn't feel like sleeping; he was, in fact, really scared. He wouldn't actually see his friends again for god knew how long, and he'd be in a totally different environment. Then, all of a sudden, he started spinning off random equations in his head.

*... let z=ei¿. Then dz=ie[i¿]d¿=izd¿ or d¿=dz/iz...*

And, calculating square roots in base seven, Mike slowly fell asleep.

And he dreamed...

*****

The plane wasn't far from Japan; it was four in the morning there, and most people were asleep there too. But one girl was lying in her room, staring at her ceiling. Her hands were held behind her head, and her blue hair was disheveled...

Ami was worried. She'd gotten a 97 on her science test, even with the bonus marks. But she knew that she was fine in that aspect, she just hadn't been feeling well. That was what was worrying her, though. She'd been having... dreams. Strange dreams, dreams that frightened her, fascinated her... made her want something.

But, of course, she never remembered them.

One thing she did remember from the last one, however, was that something evil was approaching fast. She turned on to her side and sighed quietly. Strangely, she didn't have the heart to tell the others, because she could tell it was something stronger than anything they had faced before, something unimaginably strong. And since Saturn had been turned back into a baby, Ami knew they'd need lots of help fast, or else they didn't stand a chance.

But eventually, somber thoughts dissolved away and Ami drifted into sleep.

And she dreamed...

And their dreams merged.

*****

Mike stepped out of the airport, and smelled the air; not much different from downtown Toronto, though there were subtle differences. He turned back towards the entrance and waited for his parents. They had considerably more luggage to carry than he did: his mini-computer, some clothes and all the little things he had in his pockets were the only things he'd brought with him.

Eventually his parents emerged, and they took a cab to the apartment where they were staying. They took a while unpacking, and it was about five o'clock (Japan time). When he finished, Mike he asked his parents if he could go over to the park he'd seen on their way there; and since they figured he should be getting out more anyway, they said sure.

He backtracked the cab's route until he got there, and walked slowly along the path. *This is perfect,* he thought. *Nice trees, good lighting, practically fresh air... this should be great...*

There were a few couples lying on the grass in the afternoon sun, visible through all the big buildings as vertical slants of golden light. There was also a group of six girls talking noisily in a clearing. *Ah, summer,* Mike thought dryly, *the time of young couples and hot girls. Hmph.*

Mike didn't have a girlfriend because all the girls he knew thought he was way too weird. So the last three summers had been spent looking scornfully at all the couples and entertaining a quest to find a girl who didn't mind having a guy who enjoyed doing math in his spare time. He was fairly handsome, though: 5'11", well built, and a face that nearly belonged in a magazine; his personality was mostly something all parents wanted for their daughters. It was just that his personality was a bit of a double-edged sword in this respect.

But it was now a time for new beginnings-- Mike felt ready to take his said weirdness down a few notches, for the sake of making some new friends.

*****

Ami sat quietly as the others talked and laughed. She'd finally talked to Rei about her dreams, because she felt it was Rei who should be having strange dreams and premonitions. And lately, there'd been something new in the dreams: the help was finally here, but they might not access it in time... whatever that meant.

Ami turned her attention back to the group; Usagi was whining about how Mamoru was always busy with work and didn't give her enough time, and they were all arguing contentedly about it.

She wondered: *Who is "the help"? How can we find her? Or him, or it... Maybe we should get Rei to locate any new large energy sources nearby. Or I could just use my scanner, it'd be more discrete--*

She was brought out of her reverie by Makoto saying, quite loudly; "Hey, look, isn't that guy just dreamy? And he looks just like my old boyfriend..."

Suppressing a laugh, Ami turned to the young man Makoto had indicated--

*****

-- Mike saw the girl looking at him, and tried hard not to blush, without success. He looked behind him; maybe she was looking at someone else... nope. Now all six were looking at him; the brunette was still gazing at him with a dreamy expression, and the one with-- blue?-- hair had her hand over her mouth. She looked surprised.

"Well," he muttered, "here's to a new me," and he walked over to them with a purposeful stride..

*****

"Oh my gosh," whispered Ami. "Rei... Rei, it's... he's... it's the... my gosh..."

"What is it, Ami?" asked Rei.

Ami watched him advance on them, frozen. This was it-- he was what they needed. He was their only hope. He--

*****

-- stopped suddenly, and cocked his head to the side. He could hear something faint, something far away. It sounded like:

--obuggerbuggerbuggerhelpaarghnonoAarghBuggerNONOAARGH--

*****

-- and he was torn violently to the ground. Rei got up and rushed towards him, the other girls following. When they got there, Chibi-Usa went down on her knees and started shaking him and saying "are you all right?" It looked like something had fallen from the sky and hit him, dragging him down with it; but there was nothing there, no sign of impact...

*****

Mike sat up-- and left his body behind.

He looked around. Everything was in shades of brown, and moving slow, as if the world was covered in a heavy brown fog. He watched the girls fuss over his body in slow-motion, totally confused, until a voice said; UM, EXCUSE ME?

It was a hollow voice, but heavy as a lead door. Mike turned around to see a shadow floating there in front of him. It had a ragged quality, and seemed to belong to a two-and-a-half dimensional world.

AH, YES, it continued uncertainly, UH, I BELIEVE I'M SUPPOSED TO... DO SOMETHING. I BELIEVE THE WORD IS "SPEAK"?

To Mike's ears the voice was beginning to sound like it had a British accent. "Yeah... yes, it probably is," he said disbelievingly, eyes starting to bug out.

AHH, WELL THEN. I MUST SPEAK WITH YOU.

"Yeah, sure, ok... um, what is it?"

WELL, IT SEEMS I'M SUPPOSED TO PLAY SOME PART IN YOUR... OH, BULLOCKS. I'VE FORGOTTEN IT AGAIN.

"Life?" A pause. "Future?"

NO, NO, SOMETHING LIKE THAT... I'LL TELL YOU WHEN YOU GET IT.

"Destiny?"

YES, THAT'S THE ONE! The shadow drifted closer. I'M SUPPOSED TO AFFECT YOUR DESTINY GREATLY. FOR YOU SEE, it continued, YOU'RE MEANT TO BE SOME KIND OF WEAPON, OR SOMETHING. I THINK THERE WAS SOMETHING ABOUT MAGIC, AND INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL IN THERE SOMEWHERE, IF I RECALL CORRECTLY.

Mike's eyes went wide. "Magic? A-and space travel? What?" He was frowning confusedly.

NOW, the shadow started again, YOU MAY EXPERIENCE SOME... _INTERESTING_... SIDE-EFFECTS WHEN WE MERGE.

This elicited a nervous furrowing of the brows by Mike. "Merge? Side-effects?" He gulped. "Um... um?"

FOR EXAMPLE, YOU MIGHT FIND YOUR MENTAL CAPABILITIES GREATLY ENHANCED. AND POSSIBLY A FEW PHYSICAL THINGS, LIKE IMPROVED DEXTERITY.

"Well, ok, that doesn't sound too bad, but I'd still like for you to explain this whole thing a bit more..."

YES... WELL... THAT'S NOT EXACTLY ALL, BUT YOU SEEM QUITE ALL RIGHT WITH THIS WHOLE THING SO I'LL JUST GO AHEAD AND DO IT.

And before Mike could say anything else, the shadow flew into him, sending him back into his body with a painful shock, and the world returned to its normal state.

*****

Ami had been afraid that they'd need to take him to the hospital, and she really didn't know how to help, but he sat up suddenly, groaning and clutching his chest. No one knew what to do, but the pain in his body seemed to go away as fast as it came, and he opened his eyes. He stared at them, then quickly tried to scramble away. Makoto stopped him though, and said; "You looked like you'd been hurt pretty bad back there. You shouldn't try anything."

Unfortunately, Mike didn't speak Japanese, and so the words were completely lost on him. Or at least, they should've been, but he replied, amazing himself, in perfect Japanese:

"Actually, I'm quite fine."

A voice rang out in the back of his head: OH, SORRY, I FORGOT TO TELL YOU THAT YOU'D LEARN A FEW EXTRA LANGUAGES TOO. TERRIBLY SORRY.

"What happened?" asked Rei, looking at him suspiciously.

"Um," he scrambled quickly for an answer, "I have really weak ankles. Um."

"Well then," Rei scolded, "how could you be 'quite fine'? You shouldn't be walking around. Come on, we'll take you to the temple." She and Minako picked him up off the ground and set him off his feet. They all admired Mike's height-- he was a good five inches taller than any of them-- except Usagi and Chibi-Usa, who'd begun peppering him with questions.

"So what's your name?" Chibi-Usa asked happily.

"Mike--"

"That's not Japanese!" exclaimed Usagi. "Where do you come from?"

"Canada--"

"Really!" started Chibi-Usa again. "That's amazing! And you speak our language so well! Where did you learn?"

"Well I didn't--" Mike tried to rush his sentence, but to no avail.

"Say, where do you live? Have you been here long? Did you--"

They continued on, walking to Cherri Hill Temple. They all talked to him, except for Ami, and Mike noticed this. When they got there, they all took a seat in a comfy dining room and started talking. When the attention shifted from him to Usagi (who was whining once again about how Darien was so busy), he leaned over to Ami.

"Hey, you all right?" he whispered.

She nearly jumped out of her seat, which luckily passed unnoticed by the others. She calmed down and whispered back: "U- um... y- yes, I'm fine." She was trying to avoid his gaze.

Mike gave her a skeptic look, then shrugged. He whispered again. "Okay, it's just that you look a little jumpy... uh, well, I know you told me your name, but I kind of forgot in the confusion and all that." He felt he was getting used to talking Japanese. "I'd just like to thank you for... you know, helping me. And I couldn't do that without knowing your name, you know..." Mike could feel his cheeks reddening.

Now Ami blushed hotly. "I- I'm Ami. And you're welcome. Say," she said loudly now, "where are you going to school?"

Mike's mind did a double take of sorts when words came out of his mouth against his own will. "Juuban." It was in fact the name of the school where Ami, Usagi and Makoto were going, and they expressed their surprise.

YOU'RE WELCOME, said the voice in his head.

For no apparent reason (Pay no attention to this hole in the plot. Hey! You're not ignoring it!), Mike looked at his watch; 8 am Toronto time. That meant...

"Ten o'clock! Crud!"

He ran out of the temple, giving a wave to the girls (and a quick wink to Ami) and made his way back to the apartment.

When he finally got back twenty-five minutes later, his father told him; "Well, we found out where you're going to school."

Mike repeated the same thing he'd said only a few minutes ago. His father replied, with a surprised expression, "How'd you know that?"

Mike said nothing else, just went to his room and flopped down onto the bed. He thought to himself, *Man, have I got a lot of questions.*

The voice answered him; OF COURSE YOU DO. WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW?

He paused then thought; *Is there anything more that I should be aware of?*

WELL, YES. YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO ACTIVATE YOUR INTERNAL MEMORIES FOR A WHILE, THEY'LL HAVE TO BE TRIGGERED BY SOME KIND OF INTENSE EXPERIENCE, SOMETHING PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS.

*But I'll survive, right?* he asked silently.

There was a long pause. WELL... I CAN'T REALLY SAY.

"You mean I could die?!?" Mike whispered noisily.

AH, WELL, YOU SEE, IT'S A, UH... FIFTY-FIFTY CHANCE. THERE ARE BILLIONS OF DIFFERENT POSSIBLE FUTURES FROM THIS POINT. IT ALL DEPENDS ON YOUR ACTIONS.

*Yeah, but what good is this supposed power, or magic, if it won't even protect me from dying?*

BECAUSE THAT IS NOT WHAT THE POWER IS MEANT FOR. And then, Mike could tell, the voice was gone from his head.

He sighed. He still had a lot more questions, but they'd have to wait, he supposed. But he did have a lot to think about too; lately he'd been having really strange dreams, of the freaky nutbar kind. For example, his last one had been about him involved with a group of-- what, five?-- no, it was more like six-- well, five or six girls. They had all been faceless silhouettes in his dream, but they were now, in his mind, gaining features, faces. One of them almost looked familiar...

His mind began to wander. *Ami... what a girl. Never met one quite like her... Wait, what am I saying? Is it... could I be in love? Hmm... Iopri! Imhotep Anpu! Quijibob Izumi!*

Mike grabbed a penny from on top of his dresser. He'd insisted on bringing it with him. He directed his arms to the light switch.

*... let range=15 feet. Let windspeed=.002. Vector one-eight. let tension=7. Angle two-five. Fire.*

The penny flicked out of his hands and hit the switch, and the lights went out. But as he lay there, he couldn't help feeling that everything was happening a bit too... too much like a story. Eventually though, with random thoughts spinning through his brain, he fell asleep.

And he dreamed.

*****

Ami found herself in bed again, thinking. She'd told the others about Mike, but they were skeptical. They thought Rei should be the one having premonitions, though (ironically enough) Rei was the only one who actually believed her. She'd been catching vibes off him; not bad ones, but not necessarily good ones. Definitely strong ones, though.

Of course, Makoto couldn't care less what the others thought about him, she just thought he was drop-dead gorgeous. She'd been trying to catch his attention all evening, but they'd all seen how Mike was looking at Ami...

She blushed, even though no-one was around. She wouldn't let silly feelings get into the way of protecting the Earth. And she couldn't believe someone like him would actually be interested in her. She turned on her side as the idea of it made her blush even more. So far, boys talked to her mostly just to get help with homework. She just couldn't fathom Mike actually liking her that much. But he had been very nice to her, and he was fairly handsome--

Ami pulled the covers over her head as she turned completely red. She'd only felt like this with one person: Urawa. But she hadn't seen him in a long time... and the wink Mike had given her made her feel... good.

But she knew-- she just _knew_-- that it would never work, and so she tried to forget it, and fell asleep.

And she dreamed.

But this time their dreams did not merge; they were already as one.

Here is what they dreamt:

A large, pitch black, fantastically designed spacecraft flew away from earth, roaring noiselessly in the vacuum of space.

Ahead of it were a few dozen more, all of sizes varying from man-sized to humongous, which were headed straight for earth, straight for this sole ship blasting away from terra firma. Each had red borders on the wings.

The fleet began firing all sorts of missiles and energy weapons at the one ship, while this last one leveled all its turrets on the incoming wave of destruction and opened fire, the ship always speeding full blast straight into the middle of the armada.

Inside the singular ship, a faint crackle from the communications system sounded, followed by a familiar female voice: "Please, don't do this! You don't need to do this!" The strain of worry in the voice was plain even over the static.

And, from the silent, empty ship, came a reply: "Forgive me... but I must."

The ship blasted it's way through the incoming weapons and just as it neared the one immensely large frigate at the center of this invading force, a white force ball grew instantly from the ship to envelop everything currently orbiting this area of the earth, every last ship...

And winked out of existence, leaving nothing but a lot of empty space.

*****

The next morning, Mike's mother tried to give him a map, though he insisted he knew exactly where he was going. She and his father glanced amusedly at each other, then let him go. As he walked, somehow knowing exactly where to go, he came across Makoto, who appeared to be walking considerably slower then he was. No, wait... he was just going much faster than she was. There was a subtle difference...

Makoto turned around as she heard him drastically reduce speed, and said happily to him, "Ohayo, Mike! How're you doing?"

Mike muttered something about "goddamn jet lag" in a tone she couldn't hear, then, louder, "Not bad. Y'self?"

"I'm great! Say," the school was now visible, "where are your school supplies?"

All he was carrying was a big binder. "It's all in here: paper, pens, calculator, ruler, and all that stuff. Question-- don't Ami and Usagi walk with you?"

"Well, Ami usually gets there early, and--" she laughed-- "Usagi's usually late."

The walked inside the school and separated as Mike went to the principal's office. The staff welcomed him in English; they didn't know anything of his "language skills"...

The principal gave him his full uniform, directions to the change rooms, and told him to come back to the office once he'd changed so that he could get a "briefing" on his introductionary ceremony.

Mike waited around for his teacher to come, and busied himself with an interesting new concept in Thau-dimensional physics, which unified time, space, magnetism, gravity and, for some reason, broccoli.

His teacher finally got there, so he followed him to his class and they got there just as the bell rang. They stepped in, and all the students stood, bowed to the teacher, and sat back down. Mike glanced around; Makoto was there, as was Usagi. And there in the front row was Ami... He had to admit, all the girls looked-- he gulped-- stunning, thanks to their mini-skirts. He realized he was staring in a way that might be considered, at the very least, impolite, so he lowered his head, eyes wide, chest pounding, blushing, and to the assorted giggles and obviously feminine whispers.

"Did you see him look at me?"

"I think he was looking at me."

"Oh, get over yourself. He's probably already got a girlfriend."

"I guess you're right. Too bad... ooh, look at him! He's so tall, and handsome..."

"And he looks so smart! Wow, he looks perfect... he's probably a real jerk, though. They're all like that."

"Stop being such a cynic."

He and the teacher reached the desk in the front of the room, and the teacher said in English: "Students, I'd like you all to meet Mike Kostecki. He's come here all the way from Canada, and has no idea how to speak Japanese, so you--" He paused as Usagi's hand shot up. He gave her a funny look. "Usagi, you... you're on time."

"Yes sir, but I have to tell you that Mike speaks Japanese really good. You should hear him!" She was right now speaking Japanese.

The teacher turned towards Mike, and hissed: "Is this true?"

Mike was still standing head-down with a face like a beet, eyes plastered to the floor. "'s true," he muttered in Japanese.

"Oh. Well, that just makes matters easier. So, if you'd just write your full name on the board for everyone, we can get started. In English, if you can't translate it."

Mike stepped up to the board and began writing. He surprised everyone though, when after he'd written his name in English, he added underneath it a bit of well done kanji, which said 'Meiko Baten', and .

He turned to the class. "Right. My name is Mike Kostecki, and I come from Canada. But, to facilitate things, you may call me Meiko-san, if any of you insist on being proper. Or, just Yano, if you want. I'm quite sure of what it means, and it sounds neat to me, so call me that, if you please."

A lot of the students got funny looks on their faces, but no one said anything. So, the teacher gave him his timetable, and told him to find a seat. Most of the girls, including Makoto, began waving their arms for Mike to sit beside them, but he walked up to the front row and sat right beside Ami, only now what had inspired him to take a name which meant 'dark child of the heavens', or that other one, ''...

For once, Ami showed unabashed interest as he looked at his schedule. "I see you're taking a few of the difficult courses..."

Mike frowned. "Which ones?"

She pointed them out. "Here-- Computer & Information Technology, and the advanced Science class."

He sat still for a few seconds. "Ano... those are difficult?"

She looked him in the face. "Well, they're generally considered the more difficult courses..."

"Why?"

Ami just stared at him.

"Oh, come on, Comp is the easiest thing, and I have good memory for formulae and equations, so science will be a piece of cake."

"Hmm..." She looked back down at his sheet. "Then why aren't you in Enriched Mathematics?"

"Nah, I did way more theoretical and academic stuff than I liked in my old school, so I just stayed in the normal academic course, which was much more practical."

"Well, I think you might enjoy the course here-- it's not what you'd expect, I think."

They were interrupted loudly by the teacher. "May we begin, Mizuno-san, Meiko-san?"

Both Ami and Mike snapped their heads to attention, blushing, while the class giggled and guffawed around them.

*Oy vey,* thought Mike, *what a blabber-mouth I'm being... still, I haven't had a conversation that serious for a while...*

*I-- I don't understand... how can he distract me so easily from school? And my reputation is beginning to get tarnished... people have NEVER laughed at me before...*

And the rest of the morning was pure silence between the two of them.

*****

Mike's morning periods for the first day were Japanese and History, which he managed to survive without falling asleep (he found that his knowledge of just about EVERYTHING had increased)... though he suffered some humiliation at the fact that teachers changed rooms, not the students. It had been pretty funny when Mike just got up and left when the bell rang...

Anyway, now everyone was outside for lunch, either eating, talking running around... occasionally all three at the same time. Mike had located an empty bench for himself, and was now fiddling with his cross between a graphic calculator and a laptop.

"Hey, Mike!"

He winced as he heard those happy notes, and looked up from what he was doing to see Makoto rushing toward him, Usagi and Ami in tow. They all plopped down at his bench. Makoto looked at him resume his typing, then waited for a while. Eventually, she asked: "Aren't you going to eat?"

Mike looked up at her again. "No, I'm probably not."

Both Makoto and Usagi were dumbstruck. "Nani?! You... you're not having ANY lunch?!"

"Waste of time, I find," he replied absently, and went back to his device.

Usagi, of course, thought no more of it, and began wolfing down her lunch. Meanwhile, Ami was looking everywhere but at Mike...

Makoto looked at him some more, a little frustrated. "Look, you can't ignore the necessity of good nutrition just because you want to play with your silly game."

Again, Mike stopped typing. And once more, he looked at her, eyebrow raised. "Game? This? Hardly," he scoffed. "This contains my life's work, little as there is, and is probably the most advanced bit of technology you'll see in your lifetime."

Once again, he'd unwittingly sparked Ami's interest. She turned away from Usagi's scarfing, and looked at his little computer. "That's a curious model," she said, surprising both Mike and Makoto. "What are its specs?"

Mike wasted no time, and instantly gave it over to her. "Here; open the Hard Drive... right, System Folder... now, Preferences..."

Ami paused, and looked at him skeptically. "I'm not familiar with this OS..."

He sighed wearily, as if he'd said this countless times before; "It's a Macintosh. Very few seem to like it, but that's because they don't advertise as much. It's pretty good otherwise, but I had to debug my copy of OS X. Not too hard, but really tedious..."

When she finally looked at the list of the computer's assets, she felt like she'd been smacked in the face.

"*Eight teraher*--"

He put his hand on her shoulder, silencing her. "Yes, eight terahertz, along with 280 gigs of RAM, 16 terabytes of disk space, an NVidea GeForce 3, two 1024 speed CD-ROM/DVD/LCDD drives, a CD-ROM/DVD/LCDD burner/writer, has a color laser printer (though I kept it at home), a remote surround-sound system (also at home), an infranet satellite connection, and supercharged lithium batteries for long life.

"Just don't tell anyone."

The three girls just sat there dumbstruck, for their own reasons. Ami, because she couldn't believe the technology that had just been described to her; Makoto, because Mike had opened up so much for Ami and not for her, which confused her; and Usagi, because she hadn't understood a word he'd just said.

"How... how is that even possible?!" exclaimed Ami, since this surpassed even her own supercomputer which came with her Senshi uniform. "Haven't you heard of Moore's Law? The ability--"

Mike interrupted as if he knew by heart what he was talking about. "The ability to place electronic circuits on a silicon computer chip doubles about every 18 to 24 months, allowing the speed of the computer's processor to double as well."

"So how could you POSSIBLY get a computer to run so fast?!"

He shook his head sadly. "Nanotechnology, Ami, nanotechnology... it is the dawn of a new era in computers."

Ami was completely fascinated, and was acting totally irregularly, Makoto could see.

"But that kind of technology is virtually impossible to find yet! It's almost unheard of!"

"Oh, me and a few friends were having some fun in one of their dad's lab, and next thing you know we've got the smallest existing supercomputers."

"What-- do you mean there's more than one of these?"

"Oh, sure, we all made ourselves some. That means... there are six currently done, and we were working on a redesigned model before I left, which makes three other prototypes..."

Makoto interrupted them angrily, getting ticked off that Mike was paying so much attention to Ami over her. "So, if you're so smart, why don't you just make another one for her?"

Ami was exhilarated by the idea. "Oh, could you Mike, could you please?" Her eyes were all big and shimmery, which would probably startle anyone who knew her who were walking by at the moment.

"Um... well, creating the whole thing wouldn't be TOO hard, but I'd need the materials flown over from my friends in Canada, as well as the nanotech that allows for the construction of the computer... and I'd also require a laboratory in which I could perform the programming for the hardware and software, not to mention anything specific you'd like on it...

"But, despite all that, I *think* I could do it."

And even Usagi stopped eating and took notice when Ami reached over and hugged Mike, thanking him profusely. It was then that Mike realized that this wasn't how she usually acted, and that he needed to adjust some before he was comfortable with something like this. In fact he REALLY needed to adjust FAST.

In other words, he went bug-eyed, then got a major nose-bleed, then fell over backwards. He sprang back up, hand behind his head and plagued with sweatdrops, stammering and stuttering. "Y-Y-Yeah, s-sure, ha ha! Umm--" And with all haste, he ran away, cursing himself every step that pulled him farther from the table.

It was then that Ami also realized that such was not regular for her to act in such a fashion, and promptly turned ten different shades of red and ran away, on the verge of tears, in the opposite direction.

Usagi watched all this with a heavy heart. Ami needed a friend right   
now. And looking at Makoto's frown, Usagi was quite sure that she was the one to do it...

*****

The rest of the day was quite uneventful, the last two classes of the day being English and PhysEd. Mike and Ami hadn't spoken at all, except to the teacher, for the whole afternoon, ignoring each other as much as was possible.

Mike took his time leaving the building, so that he wouldn't have to confront any of the girls outside, hoping that he could just go somewhere and relax, think about the day's happenings... or maybe just daydream about Ami--

_Whoah_, what was he thinking? That was the absolute worst thing he could do right now. He stepped outside, shifting through the already departing crowd of students to find a nice shady spot under a tree. He sat down, pulled out his mini-supercomputer, and began fiddling with it, instantly relaxing. He was in familiar territory, now.

The first thing he did was open a program that he'd made himself, which displayed an overhead view of wherever the computer was situated. Small dots flickered on and off on a green background for seconds at a time, creating a hypnotizing sensation...

But it was actually tracking any moving object headed in its specific direction within a fifty meter radius. It used a discarded satellite that had been ordered shut down by whatever government had launched it, since it seemed to have caused some political problems, or something... anyway, Mike had managed to establish a link to it, reactivate it, and program it to his uses.

Right now, he was just using it to check if any of the girls were coming to talk to him, in which case he'd... well... okay, so he didn't know what he'd do if they DID come to talk to him, but at least he'd be forewarned.

Nothing stayed lit up on the screen for more than a couple of seconds, so Mike relaxed again, having tensed up in the last minute. Now he just looked around at the front of the school, which was nearly emptied. *Wow,* he thought, *some of these Japanese kids don't like school any more than we do back--*

His thoughts were interrupted by his computer emitting a somewhat loud siren, warning him that something was approaching him directly and had been for a few seconds now. He groaned, and looked at the screen to see from where the approaching person was coming from...

But there was nothing there.

Mike frowned. None of his programs ever malfunctioned-- they didn't have a function for it. He typed in a few digits, and the screen pulled back; now the dots for people were minuscule, since he'd pulled the radius back to one hundred and fifty meters, but still nothing showed up.

He thought for a few seconds, trying to shut out the incessant siren, and finally pressed a few more buttons. The screen drastically changed: it was now showing a horizontal depiction of the fifty meter radius around him, but was showing everything from where the satellite was orbiting to the earth, with a neat blue for the sky.

And near the top of the screen was a somewhat larger dot, approaching the bottom of the screen with quite a bit of speed.

Mike, now becoming thoroughly worried, put away his computer, stood up and looked straight above him, through the sparse tree and into the sky. No... no, he couldn't see anything. He stepped out from under the tree, and tried again. Wait... that small black dot... what was it? It wasn't a plane, since it wasn't moving... it couldn't be a bird, it was much too small to be that high... Hey...

He realized that it was slowly increasing in size, which probably meant it was falling... right on top of him!

He ran towards the street, something spurring him to great speeds, and then he stopped and looked up again. The object was definitely getting closer, and getting larger. From the speed of its growth and descent, Mike imagined that it was the size of a large RV... it was still pretty high up, but he could now tell that it was going to land only a few meters in front of the school. But what was it? It looked like a big, spherical cigar, though it was a bit more fat than one would be at that size...

*U.F.O.?* Mike wondered. *No, that thing's to small to be a real space travel device. But, it definitely isn't made anywhere on earth, as far as anyone knows...*

Just then, Ami came out of the school, head down, walking very slow. She seemed extremely chagrined about something.

But right now, all Mike could think of was of how the path of this object and Ami's path were going to cross-- at the same time!

He didn't have a second to lose; if he was right, Ami would be flattened by this big thing in about twenty seconds if she didn't stop or move any faster. He ran right up to where he knew it was safe to stand, and yelled. "AMI! AMI, GET AWAY FROM THERE!! QUICK!!!"

Ami barely looked up at him, and didn't speed up at all. He could see she had been crying--

But there was no time to think, only to act. Mike tore himself from the spot and hurtled at Ami, who'd lowered her head again, and tackled her into the bushes near the entrance of the school. She cried out loudly in surprise, angry and surprised that Mike was doing this--

But then they both heard and felt something large thump into the ground very very near them. Ami herself just freeze, Mike holding her down, with mixed emotions... but before she could gather her wits about her or regain her breath, Mike was already up and away, and she couldn't bring herself to stand up, for fear of what he'd just saved her from...

Mike had already approached the smoldering vehicle, which he could now see it was, and was waiting for it to cool off while examining every exterior detail he could see. Incredible! It appeared to be some kind of space travel device, and the front windshield was blackened from entry into the atmosphere. A strip of neon yellow ran around the perimeter of the vehicle, probably showing where it opened up, he thought...

His theory was then proved as the upper half of the craft rose up a few inches with a loud hiss, a few clouds of moisture escaped the interior, and all was silent once again. Mike put his hand just above the metal... he couldn't feel any heat any more. *Wow, that was fast...*

Gingerly, he placed his hand on the craft, and seeing how it didn't sear his hand off, he began excitedly to push and pull on the cover of the ship, trying to see what was inside. Ami was sitting up now, and could see him prance around as if everything were sunshine lollipops... *Quite unnatural for someone so logical,* she thought disdainfully to herself, though it didn't last... *But it makes him look so _cute_! ... What am I THINKING...*

Mike still couldn't believe his eyes. Owen was right! The government HAD been hiding space travel technology! Heck, maybe he was even right about the Confederation, the Rebels, and the Nephilim, or whatever he called them...

Slowly, after a few minutes of trying, he realized that he wasn't going to be able to open this thing from the outside, so he began pounding on the hull of the ship. "HEY!! ANYONE HOME?! COME ON OUT!!" He continued for another couple of minutes, but his voice was running out of strength, and gave up on that too. He dashed back over to where Ami was sitting, looking at him with a funny look. He pulled her up in a flash, and began shouting gibberish at her with the face of a mind lost in its own little world. His eyes had a certain manic gleam that was truly unsettling.

"This is incredible!!! Imagine the possibilities!!!! Think of the implications!!!!!" Mike gripped onto Ami like there was no tomorrow. "It's all--" And all of a sudden, his eyes rolled back into his head, and he began to quiver with something that looked like a seizure.

"Mike, stop it-- you're hurting me!"

With a shock, his eyes returned to the present, and let he go of her arms. He staggered back a few more steps, fell to his knees, and looked at her, sorrow in his eyes. "I'm sorry... I'm so sorry... I..." Mike lowered his head for a long second, then raised it again. There was now a haunted look in his eyes. "You'd better go before the Confeds get here," he said somberly.

"But I can't just--" Ami replied, panicking, but she was interrupted.

"Do it. Before it's too late for you to run." Mike stood, and turned quietly toward the spacecraft. "They're only here for me." There was a strange tone of irony in his voice.

Ami was really worried now. Mike had gone crazy, and quite a bit self-centered too. But he seemed so serious, it was hard to tell...

Mike looked at her again. "Fine. Have it your way..." He clenched his left fist into a ball, and it was instantly surrounded by a glowing, red-orange ball of energy. Ami jumped back, half in surprise, half in fear, but Mike just smiled. "Hey. Don't be afraid. This'll take you to safety, don't worry."

He spread his hand in her direction, and the ball floated up to her, then slowly grew to encompass her in its bright glow. She shrank away from it, but it didn't actually touch her-- it just suddenly ended up all around her.

Through the shimmering field surrounding her, she could see Mike looking at her with the saddest expression she'd ever seen, a tear running down one cheek, and then she was somewhere else...

Mike turned to the pod again. Yes, he now knew it was an escape pod. And he knew who was in it. The hatch opened further, and out stumbled a large man wearing strange clothes. They seemed truly out of place, even among each other. He wore black tights and shirt, but he had an orange vest on top, his shoes were white, and he wore a green captain's hat.

This man looked at Mike, Mike looked at the man...

THIS IS IT, I SHOULD THINK, YOUR DRAMATIC EVENT, came the voice all of a sudden in Mike's head.

*Yeah... it is.* Mike's thoughts were somber, and the ghost's presence left again.

They were the same. Despite the clothes, despite the height difference... this man had the same face as Mike. He stared, not in awe, but in rapt attention. The strange man just smiled benignly, as if he knew exactly what was going to happen next...

"So-- that'll be my life?" Mike asked.

The other nodded, smiling.

A pause... "And I'm going to have to go through all that?"

Another nod, but the man no longer smiled.

"Shit." Mike grimaced. "No way of averting it, I suppose... and I won't remember this conversation?"

"Nope," the other finally said, with a voice that, while distinctly more gruff, was still almost identical to Mike's. "Dunno why."

"Oh well. Ah, crap... all that... that's unreal. Hey... will me and--"

"Yes, you will." Elder Mike grinned. "And it will have been glorious... while it had lasting." The grin disappeared.

"Damn that past-future-perfect tense. Hey, wow... so they're really--"

"Need you say it out loud?" His tone was impatient.

"Oh, all right... So... why does this happen? Will it make a difference?"

"Search me. All I know is that this'll probably happen to you again in quite a while, but you'll be talking to a younger self, from my standpoint."

"Oh, hooray. But what good will it do me?!"

"Come on, you should've seen all that happens between now and... well, now. You know that you'll have to... well, you know."

"Huh... I won't for long."

"Yeah, yeah... don't worry. You _will_ remember it at certain points, as you must now... remember."

"Bah... oh well. So, where are you... am I going now?"

"Whatever. Just... away. Here, take this..." The grown-up Mike handed the adolescent one a piece of paper, on which were written the words 'Overhead compartment -- Password: Mizuno'. "So you don't... forget."

"Sure." Mike waved goodbye, and the older Mike ran off without another word. Mike waited a second... and another...

"Whoah, what just happened?!" Mike looked around, wide-eyed. No, he had no recollection of what had just happened. All he knew was that Ami was gone, the space device was open now, and he had a piece of paper in his hand-- a piece of paper?!

"Hmm... but what... _Mizuno_... what the hell..." Mike was dumbfounded, and this state was improved little when Ami reappeared from out of nowhere right behind him, landing on the ground with a thud. "Ami! What happened to you?!"

Ami stared at Mike, desperately searching herself for an answer... but she pulled a blank. "I-- I don't know..."

Mike's look passed from stupefied to worried for a moment, but he managed to hide it before Ami caught it. Or, he thought so, anyway. "Well, I seem to have found this paper, and I'm not sure what it means..."

She looked at it, thought a moment, and could only conclude one thing: "It must mean there's something inside the ship that... well..."

"Indeed." Mike could tell Ami was just as lost as he was. "Oh well; the thing's open now, so we might as well see if it checks out..." The two approached the craft, warily, but when it didn't lash out at them, Mike took the initiative and climbed inside.

Ami waited in front of it-- she had to think of why her name would be on this piece of paper that had apparently come out of nowhere...

It appeared to be some kind of escape pod-- it was cramped, food wrappers littered what little floor there was, and a few compartments lay half open. One didn't, though-- considering how one should lie down in this thing, it was an overhead compartment. Mike looked at the note again. "Ok, got that part..."

He ran his hand over and around the compartment to find a latch, but there was no way of opening the small drawer. Or was there... Mike looked back outside, where Ami was watching him anxiously. He turned back to the compartment, leaned close, and, with blushing features, said "Mizuno..."

The compartment instantly sprang open, and he reached inside. He pulled out a small hand-held device, but he couldn't identify it in the dark ship. He scrambled back outside to Ami, and observed it. It looked quite similar to his own personal computer, though somewhat more futuristic-looking... He pressed the button on the keypad which he assumed turned the thing on, and both he and Ami listened in awed silence to what followed next...

"My name is Zach Jaansen... or at least, that's the name I was assigned... but everybody calls me Scumdog. It's a nickname I picked up plying the trade routes across the pirate-infested combat zones between... ah, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I still have a few hours before my backup life support system totally gives out completely, so I can indulge in a bit of melodramatic exposition. That is, if the power cell in this recorder doesn't run out first...

"Ahem. I guess I'll start at the beginning. Though I can't tell you where I was born, I grew up on an agricultural plantation on Deneb III, and I thought that being a farmer was going to be my one and only career. Then, when I was only nineteen, the Great War came and changed everything. My friends and I, doing our duty to protect the planet of our birth, went down to the recruiting station and signed up. When the Deneb III militia-- and all the local militias of all the planets mankind had colonized-- was absorbed into the newly-formed Confederation the next month, we all became privates in the Confederation military. Most of my friends were picked for the Confed Marines, while I was selected for fighter school-- probably because of my reflexes. They all made fun of me because they thought I was going to miss out on all the action. I guess they were right-- I never saw them again, and three months later I heard that their entire company had been wiped out when the ground assault against the alien refueling base on New Washington had walked right into an ambush.

"In the early years of the War, I was assigned to fly an F-37 Manta light fighter-- one that had been requisitioned from some planet's militia forces, I'll bet-- for the 93rd Fighter Wing, on patrol around the perimeter of the Core Worlds. This was before the Confederation Navy really had any ships that were up to par with their alien counterparts, you understand, so what were mostly rear-guard patrols at first for me rapidly turned into last-ditch front-line defenses of the Core Worlds, as those damned aliens moved closer and closer to the heart of our little sphere of inhabited systems. It was only when we were able to bring our new series of warships into full production that we were finally able to turn the tide.

"After I punched out of my Manta during the Battle of Sirius, I was given a medal and transferred to the 357th Fighter Wing, flying one of the new Confed patrol ships from the heavy cruiser U.S.S. Saratoga. We kicked alien ass all the way back to the fringe worlds during my tour on the Saratoga, and when the War ended I had over fifty kills to my name.

"It was after the end of the War that I decided I'd had enough of military life, and signed up as the first mate of the civilian ore freighter Loadstar. I saw the galaxy while serving aboard that ship, and learned everything I could about the life of a merchant captain. I learned so much, in fact, that when I had finally saved up a substantial pile of credits I decided to invest it in a ship of my own. And that's where things started to get really interesting...

"I remember the first time I ever sat in the pilot's chair in my first ship, the cargo shuttle Journeyman. I hadn't been at the controls of a ship that small in quite a while -- not since I piloted a single-seat fighter during the Great War, in fact. It didn't take me long to get used to the controls again, though. They say piloting a starship is like riding a bicycle; once you learn how to do it, you never forget.

"My first action as captain and sole crewmember of the cargo shuttle Journeyman was to land on the planet I was orbiting, the freeport of Levo. As I set down on the landing pad, I couldn't help but notice all the water around the spaceport perimeter. Sure, they say the island of Locanda is 'perfectly safe' from tidal storms, but I sure wouldn't want my brand-new ship to receive a hull-washing without my permission...

"I had been in many spaceports before when I was first mate on the ore freighter Loadstar, but I hadn't really looked closely at one before. The Levo spaceport was rather interesting-- there were several things to do there. I saw an automated mission computer terminal on one wall, and over on the west side there was a sign advertising some kind of spaceport bar, but I decided these would have to wait. If I was going to make any money, I figured I'd have to start trading some goods. I hoofed it over to the Levo commodity exchange to see what was for sale...

"I loaded my ship with foodstuffs from the commodity exchange. Food is on demand on a lot of worlds, so I figured it wouldn't be tough to find a place to turn a profit on it.

"After blasting off with a cargo bay of food, I cruised outward, toward the perimeter of the Levo system. On the way I passed another ship-- a light freighter, by the looks of it-- which was dropping into Levo's gravity well after finishing its hyper-space jump from a far-off system. Being a neighborly sort of pilot, I hailed them and said hello. Their captain told me the location of a good place to sell the food I was carrying... a pretty useful piece of information, I thought.

"Yeah, a starship captain always needs to know where he stands-- not just in terms of where he is, but also how he's doing. My star map and my computer's summary screen were my most valuable sources of information. Made life just that much easier for me. Told me where the freighter captain had told me to go to sell my food.

"After getting used to the controls of the Journeyman, visiting Levo, buying a few goods and hailing a couple of passing ships, I decided it was time to move on to bigger and better things. I set course for the Capella system and cruised outward, away from the clutches of Levo's gravity well, into the fringes of interstellar space. When I was out far enough, my computer signaled that everything was ready for hyperjump. I still get a thrill every time my ship leaps into hyperspace, because I just know that when I drop back into realspace there's going to be a whole new set of adventures and things to see. Well, normally there is, anyway. I've got a feeling I won't be making any more hyperjumps any time soon...

"The trip to Capella took an entire day, measured in real time, but for me the process was instantaneous. There was the standard nausea and dizziness that I always get from a hyperspace jump-- the Navy docs told me it everyone gets that, something about traveling so far in zero time doing something to your inner ear-- but it passed quickly, and I scanned the status display and found that the jump had been successful. I was on the edge of Capella's gravity well, about one light-second out. I was almost immediately buzzed by two patrol ships, just like the one I used to fly, and I gave them a friendly wave out of my cockpit window. In the distance, a luxury liner was dropping into high orbit around Capella, and the planet itself glowed bright green and blue a few thousand kilometers away.

"After my trip to Capella, my fuel supply was depleted somewhat, so I refueled at the Capella spaceport. It was only a hundred credits, and you can never have enough fuel, I always say.

"Now, one place I visited often, the Tau Ceti system, is truly a beautiful place-- the inhabited moon Merlin sweeps majestically around the rusty sphere of Tau Ceti IV once every twenty-three days, and the bright pinprick of light that is the colony of New Columbia hovers in the distance. However, in systems like that my ship's navicomputer always got a little confused, as there was more than one place it could try to land. I always got around this by telling it exactly where I wanted to go.

"Well, it didn't take me long to tire of hauling other people's cargo around for them. Sure, being a merchant doesn't pay too bad, but the reason I bought the Journeyman was so that I could have a little excitement now and then, not just to continue doing my old job. I had a desire to visit the Fringe regions-- the band of sparsely-settled systems on the edge of explored space-- and see what life was like a hundred light-years from the center of known space.

"I knew from my two tours as a fighter pilot that the Fringes are a dangerous place to travel without some firepower on your side, though. In those days it was the aliens; now it's the Rebellion and the damned pirates. All the independent systems have trouble with pirates to some degree, and the farther out you venture, the more risk you run. For that reason alone, I wanted to equip my little ship with a bit of extra protection from attack.

"Heh... I didn't see the pirates until it was almost too late. The first warning I got was when my threat warning board lit up like a Christmas tree, and the ship's master alarm screamed a shrill alert in my ear. I frantically stabbed at the targeting controls to try to locate the ship that was making my plot board go wild with computed intercept trajectories.

"There it was, about six hundred klicks away, closing fast from around the night side of Nimbus III. My targeting scanner identified it as an Argosy-class light freighter, piloted by Renzan Lefnor. The pirates really like using Argosies for raiding the supply routes, as they're more than a match for most unprotected freighters and can carry off a large stash of loot as well. I activated the navigation computer and evaluated my options: I was too low on fuel to attempt to hyperjump out of the system, and the attacking ship was between me and the safety of Nimbus III. There was no choice but to fight it out.

"Fortunately, I wasn't defenseless. By this time I had upgraded the Journeyman quite nicely, with a pair of laser cannons and a layer of ablative armaplast plating for defense. The Argosy was much bigger, but I had the advantage of surprise-- he couldn't have been expecting me to fight back. I punched the acceleration controls and steered the ship onto an intercept course while warming up the firing circuits...

"Ok, so even with all the amenities I'd added onto her, the Journeyman was no match for the pirate Argosy. The dark freighter was many times bigger than my tiny shuttle, and its gun crews could bring their turrets to bear quicker than I could swing my craft around. My little ship put up a good fight, but I knew it was over when my shields failed with a crackle of fried electronics. As the smell of burnt insulation and the sound of overloaded and sizzling power couplings filled the cabin, I knew my ship was dying. It was then that I said a silent prayer of thanks to whatever had made me spend the extra credits to buy that Markin-Bater escape pod. I climbed in, sealed the hatch, and pulled on the eject handle as if my life depended on it. Hey, that's pretty funny... I hope that when-- if -- somebody finds this, they won't edit that part out.

"My poor battered shuttlecraft dwindled to a dot in the distance as the powerful fusion rockets propelled me and my escape pod away from the stricken vessel. The laser bolts that still pounded the shuttle's side formed an eerie green ribbon connecting the pinpoint that was the shuttle to the larger dot of the pirate ship. Suddenly there was an explosion, brighter than the sun, and the speck of my shuttle became a rapidly-expanding cloud of ionized gas and metal fragments.

"I don't know why the pirates didn't board her before they blew her up-- I guess maybe they scanned me and saw that I wasn't carrying much of value, or maybe Renzan Lefnor just liked picking on harmless little shuttlecrafts. As I unwrapped a crunchy ration stick and tried to figure out where my present course would take me, I thought of all the systems I'd visited with the trusty Journeyman, and vowed to make Lefnor pay for his transgressions if I ever encountered his ship again.

"I drifted for three days before a passing freighter picked me up. Man, I must've read that complimentary Markin-Bater brochure a hundred times. The freighter captain dropped me off in the Farla system, where I withdrew everything I had from my bank account in order to be able to afford a new ship. I'd made quite a pile of credits as a merchant during that year, so I decided to forego buying another shuttlecraft and move up to something bigger.

"It took three days to sign all the papers and hire the crew of my new ship, a Maskirova IPV-1 corvette. That trim little vessel was one sweet machine, whose every line and contour evoked images of speed and power. I also liked the size of its cargo hold-- with this ship, I could make money as a mercenary or a merchant. I decided to call it the Avenger, in honor of the shuttlecraft I had lost. Renzan Lefnor had better watch out if we cross paths again, I chuckled to myself.

"I spent the evening before we pushed off in the Farla spaceport bar, relaxing with my new crew. I'd had enough command experience on the Loadstar to know that it's important to get to know your crew members. One of my turret gunners and a couple of engineer's mates were gathered around the slot machines, and my helmsman, navigator, and communications officer were lounging at the bar. I was sitting at one of the tables, swapping space stories with my new executive officer, when this guy came up and sat down across from us. He gave us this story about how his shipping company was running low on transport capacity that week, and how he had an extra shipload of parcels he needed to get to the settlement on Mirimas.

"I talked it out with my XO and we agreed to help him out. It would be an easy job, we figured, and since I was running low on credits after buying my new ship, it would help pay the bills. Now that I look back on it, I realize that that was when all the troubles really started. Heck, I should've just stuck to being a simple trader...

"We left the Farla system early the next morning, after loading the parcels aboard the Avenger. On the way to our rendezvous on Mirimas, we saw a couple of formidable-looking pirate ships harassing a convoy of freighters, but we had a deadline and couldn't stop to lend assistance. We knew that the territory we would soon be passing through was crawling with Rebels and pirates, though, so at the next system we decided to stop and hire some temporary help to aid in our defense.

"We let the two hired Defenders go after we made it safely through the combat zone and into the Mirimas system. After we'd delivered the parcels and collected our payment-- a handy little sum, if I do say so myself-- we set out again to see what opportunities lay in store for us.

"Mirimas is one of the more remote settlements in the galaxy, and by the time we had safely delivered the cargo there, we were far off the chartered trade lines. It's out there, on the fringes of explored space, that the space pirates make their living. Because I knew they were out there, I kept all decks on yellow alert around the clock. It turned out to be a smart move, too-- I sure wish I had remembered to do it yesterday... Anyway, as we were preparing to make the jump to Blake's Star, heading back towards explored space, we were jumped by pirates.

"Instantly, my executive officer was shouting orders to the crew. 'Pirates off the starboard bow! Shields up, red alert! Starboard batteries, prepare to fire!'

"'Belay that last order,' I said into the PA mic. 'All turrets, hold your fire.' For I had recognized the pirate vessel-- the scanners identified it as the Darksun, captained by Renzan Lefnor. His Argosy was no match for the Avenger, and I knew it-- I wanted to have some fun with him first. I ordered my comm officer to hail the pirate vessel... all we got was static. 'Very well, if that's the way he wants to do it,' I mused, picking up the mic again. 'Attention, this is the captain,' I addressed the crew. 'Go to general quarters. All hands to battle stations. Missile bay, load tubes one and two and prepare to launch on my command. Starboard batteries, you are cleared to fire.'

"The battle was over almost as soon as it had begun. A salvo of missiles exploded against the pirate ship's port side, sending it drifting slowly away from the Avenger. As we closed within gun range, the turrets opened up and began to chew away at what remained of the Argosy's shields. Within seconds, the pirate ship was beaten, shields down and engines crippled, disabled and drifting in space. It was with great pleasure that I again picked up the mic and addressed the crew: 'Starboard batteries, hold your fire. Stand down from red alert, maintain battle stations. Weapons chief, assemble a boarding party at the ventral airlock.'

"We lasered open the Darksun's cargo hold with a quick burst from our turrets, and sent workpods into the dark space to retrieve what cargo we could find. After we plundered what we could-- about twenty tons of luxury goods, all told-- from the cargo bays, we blasted another hole in the hull and extended a refueling probe into the Argosy's dorsal fuel tank. As ton after ton of slush deuterium was pumped up to the Avenger's thirsty fuel storage pods, I considered the ship below. Most of the crew were still alive, a quick scan revealed-- most of the damage had been done to the engineering section-- so our computed chances of capturing the ship were not that good. I knew the Avenger's crew, while brave and capable, would be hard-pressed to win a hand-to-hand fight against the Darksun's remaining personnel. So, I decided to disengage our airlocks and escape intact with our booty. As we boosted away under full thrust, a weak transmission came through from Renzan Lefnor's ship. 'Damn you, you infernal scumdog!' was all it said. I guess that's how I got my nickname...

"Now, on an off note... Thirteen light-years farther in towards the center of explored space, we came upon a space station orbiting the third moon of Arcturus VII. We were low on fuel and consumables and needed to put in for a resupply stop, but we were denied docking permission. 'Negative, Avenger,' the dockmaster radioed us, 'the traffic pattern is full. No docking space available at this time.' We were all tired and just wanted to set down and get a little R&R in the station's entertainment facilities, but that damn desk jockey wouldn't give us clearance. So, I called him up again and arranged to have a few credits transferred his way, as a sort as incentive... 'Acknowledged,' came the reply, 'you are cleared for priority docking in bay two-niner.' I guess a few credits can go a long way.

"So, yeah, those pirates are bad news, but even worse are the folks who get their kicks from dominating entire planets. It doesn't happen too much anymore-- the first Great War and then the Rebellion occupied everyone's attention-- but not too many years ago it was almost common for unscrupulous pirates to extort planets for tribute. Why, I remember my... father... telling me stories, when I was... knee-high to a banderfrog, of how he used to run the blockade to deliver relief supplies during the Oberon Conflagration. In that little conflict, a band of pirates based from the asteroid belt of the Wescoe system wiped out the meager defense fleet of the planet Oberon, imposed a naval blockade on the system's jump points, and demanded thirty percent of the colonists' income. Since the galaxy's militia were all independent at that time, nobody could do much about it, except for a few independent freighter captains like my... father, who took it upon themselves to help deliver relief supplies through the blockade. It took three years to expel the pirates from Oberon... a period during which they became filthy rich from taxes levied on the colonists, I might add.

"Jeez, the oxygen meter is so close to zero that there's probably only a few minutes' worth of air left in here. I guess I'd better wrap it up...

"Three years after the events I've just described, the Avenger was on patrol near Learned's Star. It was just after the shift change at 1600 hours, and everybody was tired-- we had been out there, running cargo and patrol missions through unexplored territory, for nearly a month without any rest. The ship was running under normal alert status, and the crew was more concerned with making it until the end of the shift than tending to their assigned duties. I can't help but wonder what would have happened if I'd maintained a condition of yellow alert and stayed on the bridge like I should've, given the potentially hostile area we were patrolling.

"I was in my cabin, dreaming about what I was going to do when we reached Canopus VIII for some shore leave, when suddenly a huge explosion rocked the ship. As the emergency alarms wailed to life, I dashed out into the suddenly dark and smoke-filled companionway. More explosions jolted the ship, accompanied by the sickening screech of rending metal. I sighted a crewer coming toward me out of the smoke, and shouted 'What's happening?' at him.

"'They came out of nowhere, sir!' he yelled back at me, over the din of what I could only assume was a fierce space battle in progress. His face was ashen, like he'd just seen a ghost. 'The whole bridge is gone, sir! They just blasted off the whole bow, all the way back to bulkhead C! Engineering's been hit too-- last we heard from Mr. Johannsmeyer, the containment fields were shot to hell and the reactor was about to go critical! We--'

"Suddenly, as another explosion slammed the Avenger, the port bulkhead split with a resounding crack of overstressed plastisteel, and the atmosphere began to rush out of the companionway. With a scream, the unidentified crewman was sucked out into the vacuum of space. I managed to grab onto a handhold, and scrambled up the corridor to the nearest comm panel, ordered the crew-- those that could hear me, anyway-- to abandon ship, and struggled to the nearest escape pod cluster. I strapped myself in and hit the reassuring red button on the console, and a severe jolt pushed me back into my acceleration couch as the escape engine fired.

"As I drifted away from the stricken Avenger, now in its death throes, I rotated the escape pod 180 degrees to face the scene of the battle. The ship had been hulled in dozens of places, I saw, with the most extensive damage having been done to the bridge and engineering section, of which the latter was glowing bright red from a reactor meltdown in progress. Finally the containment fields gave out and the Avenger exploded in a white-hot fireball.

"I sat there, numb with shock, and tried to figure out who could have perpetrated such a blitzkrieg attack. A mottled red-and-black object flitted overhead at an incredible velocity, and disappeared into the distance. It was then that I realized who had been responsible for the hit-and-run attack on my ship. It was something I had hoped I would never have to witness again. It was the...

"Oh, shit! What the fuck is th--"

The device went deadly silent. As he sliped the device into one of his many pockets, beside the one he already owned, Mike looked at Ami, eyes troubled. "Wow... so what do YOU think?"

"ME?!" She sounded a bit on edge. "What am I _supposed_ to think? I mean, this can't possibly be real... it's probably someone just trying to make people believe in aliens, or something... it can't be real..."

"But it is real!" Mike pointed at the supposed escape pod. "Doesn't that look real to you?! I mean, how can you get more real than that?!"

Amy frowned angrily. "Look, there has to be a logical and reasonable explanation for this thing! This isn't--"

"You want logic?!" Mike interrupted, shouting. "I tracked that thing coming in from the upper mesosphere at terminal velocity! Explanation: I DON'T KNOW! All I know is that this is not from this time!"

Amy was really angry now. "Oh, so this-- this-- whatever it is, it just happened to take a historical detour from the future and winded up here?! It's a _publicity stunt_! That's all! Besides, if what you're saying is true, then the government would be all over this place--"

Click-click-click.

Ami and Mike spun around. Behind them had silently deployed a whole unit of men with large rifles, and it appeared they had finally grown impatient with a couple of kids' squabbling; they were ready to take decisive action...

Both teenagers put their hands up, and slowly began to walk backwards...

"DON'T MOVE!!!" one of the men screamed. They both froze. The armed men quickly advanced and secured the area, half the force clearing the area and the other keeping their guns trained on the two teenagers, as well as the escape pod.

After fifteen minutes, a small limo pulled up, and out stepped four extremely important men. The first was the military general of Japan, and the next three were representatives from the U.S.A., Europe, and the rest of Asia. They all walked calmly over to the two children, telling the guards to stand down. This was a relief for Mike and Ami, because they could now sit down on the ground, at least.

The Japanese general spoke first, in Japanese. "Which language do you speak?" he said in a very respectful and even fearful tone, even though his face was like a brick wall.

Mike looked wide-eyed at Ami. "Are these guys crazy?"

Before she could respond, all four of the men visibly relaxed. The american one stepped forward and spoke, in a clipped Japanese accent. "One of you is Japanese, one is not, correct?"

Mike went bug-eyed. "Uh, yeah. And if you'd like, we can speak English too..."

The men looked at each other appreciatively, as if they'd accomplished something. The american continued. In English. "Yes, well, we would just like you to tell us what happened here. You _were_ here to see it, I trust?"

"Well," said Ami, "we were here, but we didn't exactly... see anything."

The European sniffed indignantly. "Oh, be reasonable. Look," he waved daintily at it, "it's opened up already, so you MUST have seen what came out of it."

"Hey, listen!" replied Mike angrily. "We're telling the truth! It landed closed, we looked at it for a few seconds, and then it was open all of a sudden. We haven't even gone inside yet!" All right, so that specifically was a lie, but still...

Now it was the Asian's turn to reply. "If you do not comply, we will be forced to use methods which may not be... to your liking." He had a voice like a bag of ice.

"Are you _threatening_ us?!" Mike was incredulous. "I mean, what, are you going to do, sic a Confed gunboat on us?"

All four men stiffened, and stared at him with a mix of outrage and fear. The Japanese general raised his hand to calm the others down. "And where did you hear such a silly story? We do not know this 'Confed' you speak of."

Mike tried a smile, though he was a bit nervous what with all the attention, it looked like a rictus grin. "Oh, I know lots about the Confederation. Though, no one else seems to know anything."

The American frowned. "We'll just see who knows what..."

END of PART 1

End credits: So, whad'ja think? Not bad? Not good? Somewhere in between? Something else? e-mail me at dj_kostex@yahoo.ca with your input. (FF.Net addition: don't feel complied to e-mail me, just review, thanks.) No flames, please-- try to stick to coherent, constructive criticism. Thank you for your consideration.

Quote of the Day: "Guns don't kill people -- I DO."

Ja na! ^_^V 


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